Today we’d like to introduce you to Lisa Hendrickson

Hi Lisa, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.

My love for creating things began at a young age. Born and raised in suburban Chicago, I began painting and drawing in high school, often inspired by old family photos with their sepia shades and vintage costumes. I excelled in art classes and my parents even allowed me to take a live nude drawing class at the Art Institute of Chicago. My dream was to become a fashion designer, which I did, moving to New York City after college. Although it was a creative field filled with textures, patterns, colors, and sketching, my long working hours and small New York apartment did not leave time or space for fine art projects. After a 30 year career in the apparel field as a senior level executive in product development and merchandising, I retired in 2017.

Upon retirement, I resumed my fine art journey by setting up a workspace in my home and began to awaken my dormant art skills. As my confidence grew, I began taking in person classes at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, Wayne Art Center, and Fleisher Art Memorial studying painting and mixed media. Then COVID hit and I had all the time in the world but was stuck at home. Luckily the art world quickly pivoted towards online learning and I was able to take live Zoom classes for a year with several terrific instructors continuing to hone my craft.

Today I am a figurative artist who experiments with oil paint and mixed media creating portraits of people, places, and pets. I also consider myself a teaching artist with a focus on leading adult workshops. Volunteering is an important part of my retired life. Serving the housing challenged and food insecure communities in Philadelphia and Camden, NJ, I volunteer with several organizations that practice “radical hospitality”. In partnership with one of these organizations, I run an art table twice a month creating art with guests experiencing deep poverty.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?

My fine art journey did not follow a direct path. After college, lack of time and space were my biggest challenges. Building a career was my focus which involved long work hours and lots of overseas travel. This exposure to new cultures offered a stimulating mix of new sights, sounds, foods, and materials. Retirement has given me the time to change my creative focus from fashion to fine art.

Creating artwork can be both frustrating and fulfilling. Sometimes everything seems to come together easily and the piece works on all levels. Other times it feels like little is working and it is frustrating to keep reworking areas or colors. But often, my freshest works are then ones where I overcame “road blocks” by experimenting with new methods; sometimes making “happy accidents”. Seeing a piece come to life from a blank page to a fully evolved portrait that captures the spirit, personality and likeness of the subject (whether it is a person, pet, place, or photo memory) is very rewarding. My art practice has introduced me to new groups of people, new ways of looking at my surroundings, and new skill sets which keeps life interesting.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?

I try to visually tell the stories of people and places I have experienced. Heavily influenced by human expression, my work strives to capture the mood and emotion of the moment. I paint people and places with interesting features which reflect their rich histories and lived experiences. Closely cropped compositions and strong lighting are often an important aspect of my intimate, almost invasive portraits. The process of creation inspires me to experiment with textural techniques including work with palette knives, mixed media collages, stencils, and metallic paint. Vintage photos of everyday life often serve as subject matter with their imperfect images telling stories of the past. When choosing the medium for a portrait, I take into consideration the subject’s personality and interests, trying to capture their overall aura. Using unusual materials including cork, newsprint, torn paper, and cardboard also give my work unique characteristics. Inspired by Dorothea Lang, Hung Liu, and Leroy Skalstad whose works visually tell the stories of people experiencing adversity, I have found ways to connect my art practice with my community volunteer work, hoping to use art to raise awareness about the societal issues of homelessness, gun violence, and gender equality.

My first foray into creating socially conscious art was with the Alice Paul Institute (www.alicepaul.org), a national non-profit organization focused on fighting for gender equality. While serving on their board, I created several works featuring Alice Paul and Ida B. Wells (both important suffragists and activists), to use for education, marketing and fund raising purposes.

Next, I began working with the Souls Shot Portrait Project based in Philadelphia (www.soulsshotportraitproject.org). Artists create portraits of local victims of gun violence in partnership with their families to tell their personal stories and honor the memories of those lost. Each artist meets directly with a family to learn about their loved one’s accomplishments, interests, and dreams. This information is used to create sensitive, meaningful portraits that strive to bring joy and peace to the friends and families of victims. The group of portraits travels to various locations around PA & NJ with the mission of highlighting the terrible consequences of gun violence in our communities.

In 2021 I began creating portraits of persons experiencing deep poverty with the hope that the portraits would inspire empathy and insight into the issues of homelessness and food insecurity. Through my years of volunteer work in this area, I have learned the importance of personal conversations which help foster a feeling of belonging and recognition in a world that is often blind to those less fortunate. Making eye contact with those that are homeless, acknowledging their presence, helps them feel seen rather than invisible.

What are your plans for the future?

In August 2023 I was awarded the 2024 Kathryn Pannepacker Fellowship by Da Vinci Art Alliance (www.davinciartalliance.org). This fellowship provides an opportunity for an emerging artist to curate an exhibition exploring social, political, or cultural content that engages local communities in the DVAA gallery space. In partnership with Broad Street Love (BSL), a Philadelphia based organization that offers services to those experiencing deep poverty, I created ‘Unhoused and Unseen: our “invisible” neighbors’ which challenged the definition of physical beauty by sensitively rendering faces with character on unconventional materials to make compelling, beautiful art. The purpose of the October 2024 exhibition was to: generate empathy and awareness to the growing societal issue, educate the surrounding community that despite their current situations everybody has a rich story to tell of families, hopes and dreams, and give clients a feeling of self worth.

Beginning in October 2023, I spent a year creating the show’s elements starting with one on one interviews with BSL guests to hear their stories. With a focus on eye contact, I created the guests’ portraits, which were displayed alongside written statements about their lives, hopes, & dreams. These portraits were created using nontraditional supplies including cardboard, newsprint, brown paper bags, and cork to show that beauty can be found in ordinary, “invisible” materials. In addition to the portraits, I created a 6’x 8’ tarp quilt, called ‘The Quilt of Ordinances’, to highlight the growing issue of criminalizing homelessness. The piece highlighted the contrast between traditional quilts which evoke feelings of warmth, comfort, family, home and tarps which often serve as a temporary shelter for those living on the street. The jagged black border symbolized Hostile Architecture, the design strategy of making public surfaces sharp or uneven to prevent use by unhoused people. Spray paint representations of the universal ‘no symbol’ were used to illustrate some of the public ordinances outlawing camping, loitering, and panhandling; which add more hardships for those experiencing deep poverty, often without providing support systems. Through gallery talks and workshops with school classes, I was able to shed a light on the lives of an often overlooked part of our communities as well as suggest simple things everyone can do to help those experiencing severe poverty. Proceeds from the October 2024 exhibition, were donated to benefit Broad Street Love.

In November, I finish a second project with BSL which involved creating a wall installation. Over a few weeks I led guests and supporters in workshops creating and decorating origami hearts. Once I had a significant number of hearts, I designed an installation for a 9’ x 13’ wall in the cathedral ceiling dining space. The hearts were glued onto foam squares and then mounted on the wall. Broad Street Love’s new logo was then painted below the large heart. This new installation provides volunteer groups a backdrop for group photos.

Looking forward, I will continue to create art to tell my personal stories as well as highlight the untold stories of those experiencing adversity in my community. My plan is to use elements of the October show at new venues with the goal of creating more empathetic communities in my area. At the Art Table I host at BSL, I will continue to create beauty, share joyful moments, and create community with our housing challenged guests.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://lisahendricksonart.wordpress.com/
• Instagram: Instagram: lisa.hendrickson.art

Image Credits

All images were taken by the artist